


I Halt Encased in Wonder

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For their tenth anniversary, Ned and Catelyn go to Paris to see the churches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Halt Encased in Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is from the poem "St. John's Cathedral, Manhattan" by L'nass Shango. 
> 
> I don't own "A Song of Ice and Fire" or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

For their tenth anniversary, Ned took her to Paris to see the churches.

Catelyn had wanted to go ever since she was a child. Her parents had gone once, before she was born, and there had been an album full of photographs to document it. She remembered when she’d first seen the pictures. Her mother had sat on the couch between her and Lysa, holding the album on her lap while they all looked. She couldn’t have been more than nine at the time, but the images were still vivid in her memory. There was one picture that she’d thought was especially beautiful: it was of her mother standing in front of intricate stained-glass windows, smiling, the light catching her hair.

“It’s a church called Sainte-Chapelle,” her mother told them. “It was one of my favorite places that we visited.”

“It’s so pretty,” Lysa said.

“I wish we could go there,” Catelyn said.

Her mother smiled. “Maybe we’ll all go someday.”

“Really?” Lysa asked, looking excited. “When?”

“When you get a little older,” her mother said. “Edmure’s still too young for such a long trip. But I would love to go back. Maybe in a few years…”

They talked about the idea a few more times after that, Catelyn and Lysa pestering their mother with questions, imagining what it would be like when they went. Catelyn even chose Paris when her fourth-grade teacher had them each pick a city to learn about. She stuck pictures of the churches onto her poster board, wanting to go there and see them just like her mother had.

But then her mother got sick, and Catelyn could barely think about anything except praying for her to get better. And even when she remembered their plans many, many months later, after all the hospital visits and then her mother back home but not looking like herself at all and then the funeral and then all the nights sitting around the table without her, there wasn’t anything she could do about them. She wasn’t even sure her father knew they’d talked about it, and she couldn’t ask him to take them, anyway. Not when he was even sadder than she was. She just did everything she could to make things better and help out. But when she packed her and Lysa’s lunches in the mornings, she told herself and her mother that someday she would go to Paris. When they went to church on Sundays and prayed for her mother, she promised herself that one day she would pray for her in the churches they had talked about visiting together.

Somehow it didn’t happen, though. She suggested to Lysa that they go together the summer after Lysa graduated from college, but Lysa turned her down. “It’s not going to be like it would have been,” she said. She suggested it to Brandon for their honeymoon, and he seemed to like the idea well enough, but after the car accident—when there wasn’t going to be any honeymoon and there wasn’t any Brandon either and she felt so alone—she began to think that maybe her trip to Paris just wasn’t meant to be.

She’d mentioned it to Ned once, early when they were dating, but she hadn’t said anything much, just that she and her mom had talked about going to Paris when she was a kid and that she’d always wanted to go and see the churches. She certainly hadn’t phrased it as a plan or a proposal that they go together, and she’d never bothered to bring it up again because they’d really never had the time for such a trip. She’d still been teaching when they first married, so they hadn’t gone on a honeymoon right away, and then they’d had Robb and had taken Jon in a few months later, and any traveling was definitely on hold. She doubted that Ned even remembered her telling him, to be honest.

Which was why she was so surprised on the night of their tenth anniversary. They’d gotten a babysitter and met for dinner downtown after he got out of work; over dessert, Ned said, “Cat...I didn’t bring you a gift…I thought, if you’d like to, that we could take a trip instead. Just the two of us.”

Catelyn smiled. “That would be nice,” she said. “Did you have anywhere particular in mind?”

“I thought we could go to Paris,” Ned said, “to see the churches.” And as she stared at him, almost unable to believe that this was happening, he said, “You said that you’d always wanted to. If you still do, we could go. I talked to Benjen—we’d have to figure out dates, of course, but he said that he’d be happy to watch the kids…” He looked at her questioningly, seemingly unsure of the reason for her silence. “I thought it would be nice. We’ve never really done a trip like that. But only if you want to—”

“I want to,” Catelyn said, managing to find her voice. “Oh, God, Ned, of course I want to.” She reached across the table and grabbed both of his hands in her own. “I just…I can’t believe you remembered…and you came up with this plan and…” Words were failing her again. “This is why I love you,” she said. “I love you so much, Ned.”  She moved to kiss him, murmuring “Thank you,” and he smiled at her before leaning into the kiss.

Catelyn still half-thought that it wasn’t going to happen, even as they started planning. Something would come up: Ned wouldn’t be able to get away from work or Benjen wouldn’t be able to watch the kids or one of the kids would get sick and they wouldn’t be able to leave them. But even though it took some time to put everything together and they ended up finally booking tickets closer to their eleventh anniversary than to their tenth, somehow it did happen. Somehow one day they were kissing the kids goodbye, telling them that they would miss them and to be good for Uncle Benjen and that they would see them in a week. Somehow they were heading to the airport, boarding the plane for their flight, and crossing the Atlantic. And somehow, the next morning, they were there. In Paris. In _Paris_.

They went to their hotel first, ostensibly to rest for a bit. Despite the jetlag, however, Catelyn found that she was too excited to sleep much; she only dozed for ten minutes, if that, and she promptly nudged Ned awake at the end of the hour they’d allotted themselves. He rolled over and smiled at her. “Ready to go out?” he said. She nodded. “All right,” he said. “What do you want to do first?”

She wanted to see Sainte-Chapelle. Of all that she knew about Paris, that was the image she’d always held in her mind: the arched ceilings, the intricate stained glass, the photograph of her mother smiling. As beautiful as the photographs had been, though, they were nothing to the chapel itself, to the sight of the whole room and the way the light came through the windows. When they got there, Catelyn simply stared. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel; one minute she found herself smiling at how beautiful it was and the next she found herself wishing desperately that her mother could be there smiling with her. There were times when the ache of her loss still felt as fresh as it had thirty years ago, and this was one of those times.

Ned was there, though, and he came up beside her, silently taking her hand. “It’s so beautiful,” she offered, “and I’m so glad to be here, it’s just…” She couldn’t say more, but she knew that he understood the reason for the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

She went to mass at Notre-Dame, since Sainte-Chapelle wasn’t a functioning church. She told Ned that he didn’t have to come if he didn’t want to—he wasn’t Catholic, after all, and this was something that she wanted to do for herself and her mother—but he did come, which turned out to be just as well. When she lit a candle after the service, with her mother in her thoughts and prayers, she found herself crying much harder than she’d cried at Sainte-Chapelle, and it was a comfort to have him with her then, holding her gently through her tears. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, lifting her face from his shoulder. “I don’t mean to spend the whole trip crying.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Ned said, moving to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Of course it’s all right, Cat.”

That was part of their trip—visiting the churches, remembering her mother, and thinking bittersweet thoughts of the trip they might have taken. But she didn’t let the sadness predominate. This was its own trip; it belonged to her and Ned, and there were other parts to it too, parts full of sweetness and joy.

They were in Paris, of course, and they did all the things that they were expected to do there—visited art museums, went up the Eiffel Tower at night, visited cafés where they drank wine and ate far too much, walked by the Seine hand in hand. But perhaps they spent a bit less time out and about than they might have done.

It wasn’t as though the sex they had at home wasn’t still good—very good—but there was something luxurious about it here. At home, they had to keep relatively quiet so that the kids wouldn’t hear them; sometimes they were rushed, and they certainly couldn’t just head off to bed whenever they felt like it. And there was almost always at least the faint possibility that one of the kids would walk in unexpectedly. But here there were none of those restrictions. They could make love for as long as they wanted, staying awake together late into the night, talking and kissing and touching. They could push each other up against the wall as soon as they got in from dinner, tearing off and scattering their clothes, eager for each other and able to satisfy that eagerness. She even had Ned tie her to the bed, her wrists lightly bound over her head. They hadn’t done anything like that in a long time, because there were some things that would be very difficult to explain if someone had a nightmare and forgot the rule about knocking on closed doors, but it was something she’d always enjoyed very much. Now she relished the chance to lie back and give herself up to enjoying the slow teasing that Ned was so very, very good at. He trailed his hands and lips over every inch of her body, making her squirm and grind her hips against the bed. “God, Cat,” he murmured, “you’re so gorgeous. Do you know what I want to do with you right now?” And he detailed what he wanted to do as he continued stroking and licking and kissing, and then finally, when she couldn’t stand the teasing any longer, he brought his mouth to her clit and licked and licked and made her come, crying out his name loudly.  

It was their last day in Paris almost before Catelyn realized it, and, although they knew that they still had barely scratched the surface of the city, they decided not to do anything new. They retraced the steps of the walk that they’d most enjoyed. They returned to the bakery where they’d found the best macarons. And they went back to Sainte-Chapelle. It would never be a perfectly happy place for Catelyn, tied as it was to the trip that she had never gone on with her mother; she knew that, and yet, as she stood there this time and tipped her head back to take in the rose window, she was indescribably glad to be where she was. It was so beautiful, so wondrously beautiful, and she was with Ned, and, at least in this moment, thinking of her mother made her smile rather than weep.

They lingered over their dinner that evening and then spent one last night enjoying their unusual privacy; Ned’s touches were slow and tender and the way he looked at her so sweet. Afterwards, as they lay in each other’s arms, she said, “Thank you for this trip, Ned.”

He smiled at her. “Of course,” he said. “I had a wonderful time, Cat. Was it everything you hoped?”

“I can’t even say how much it meant,” she said. She kissed him then, and they held each other still closer.

Their flight was early the next morning, and Catelyn was a mixture of sorry to be leaving and glad to be getting back to the kids. When they landed at home, Ned gave her hand a quick squeeze, and they shared a smile before getting out of their seats. And that was the end of the vacation: now they had to deal with the rush of going through customs and finding their suitcases and tiredly making their way home. It was worth it, though, for the simple joy of greeting the kids. Bran wouldn’t stop clinging to them. Arya asked a million questions about the trip and whether they’d brought any presents. Sansa presented them with several pictures that she’d drawn. And Robb and Jon, who were going through a phase of trying to act dignified now that they were ten, forgot about all that and ran to them with hugs.

They had only brought back a few things—some wine for Benjen, which they were sure was richly deserved, and macarons to share with the children. And there was a photograph, which Ned showed her a few days later, when things were more settled down. He’d taken it on their last day, when they’d gone back to Sainte-Chapelle. She was standing in front of the stained glass windows, smiling, and it was so much like that photo of her mother, the one that had made her want to go to Paris in the first place. Looking at it made her tear up a bit—she doubted that she’d have been able to keep the smile if she’d known he was taking it—but she was glad to have it, even so.

They brought back something else too, although Catelyn didn’t realize it for over a month. It took her longer than it should have to put two and two together, to stop wondering vaguely why she felt so tired all the time and to start counting back the days to her last period. Her only excuse was that this was completely unexpected. They’d planned all of her previous pregnancies, and this…this was a surprise. But as soon as she was sure, as soon as she was over the shock, she found herself looking at it as a very nice surprise.

She wondered how Ned would look at it, but any worries she might have had on that front died as soon as she told him. His stunned look was quickly replaced by an incredible smile—one that she’d seen each time she made this announcement. “Did we…in Paris?” he asked, reaching out to put a hand on her belly.

Catelyn nodded, placing her own hand against his. Thinking about the baby made her think of other things—of their wonderful trip; of her Ned, who had made it happen; of her mother, who had once carried her just like this. She would always be glad that they went to Paris together, that she finally saw the city, full of so much beauty and wonder. And right now the gladness was almost overwhelming: there was beauty and wonder in this postscript too.            


End file.
